PATHUM THANI — Prominent academic Nidhi Eoseewong and three other guest speakers at a seminar on dictatorship held at Thammasat University’s Rangsit campus on Thursday evening were detained by police and taken in for questioning.
Prominent academic Nidhi Eoseewong and other Thammasat lecturers and students in talks with Khlong Luang police after their seminar on dictatorships was stopped by authorites on Thursday. (Photo by Pongpat Wongyala)
Mr Nidhi was addressing the forum entitled “Democracy Classroom: Chapter 2 – The Decline of Dictatorships in Foreign Countries” held in the foyer of Lecture Building 1 when officers from Khlong Luang police station and plain-clothes soldiers showed up. They asked the organiser to stop the seminar, which was organisd by a group of Thammasat students who call themselves the League of Liberal Thammasat for Democracy, or LLTD.
Three Thammasat scholars who took part in the forum - political science lecturers Janjira Sombatpoonsiri and Prajak Kongkirati and liberal arts lecturer Chaowarit Chaosangrat - had joined Mr Nidhi on stage. Security officers took the academics and the students who organised the seminar to Khlong Luang police station where they held an "attitude adjustment" session with them.
Pathum Thani police chief Pol Maj Gen Samitthi Mukkasanit said police did not press charges against anyone in the group for defying the political gatherings ban under martial law. He said soldiers had earlier submitted a letter to the university asking it to prevent such activities.
All were released on Thursday night, according to the Post Today and Thai Rath reports.
Reports said the campus had responded to the military’s request by locking a lecture room used to organise LLTD’s last seminar, but the group went ahead with the seminar in the foyer of the building.